This handout picture released on October 23, 2022 by climate mouvement "Last Generation" shows activists of the group being glued underneath the painting "Les Meules" by French artist Claude Monet after pouring mashed potatoes on the artwork in the Barberini museum in Potsdam on October 23, 2022. Photo: AFP

Two Belgian activists who threw soup on Johannes Vermeer's "Girl With a Pearl Earring" have been handed two-month prison sentences by a Dutch court recently, with prosecutors saying their actions crossed the line of acceptable protest. 

Over the years, new social movements (NSMs), including in the fields of environmental protection, have long been absorbed by Western mainstream society. However, ties between NSMs and authorities seem to have returned to a state of friction and opposition lately. This mirrors Western society's anxiety amid changing circumstances.

In the 1960s, the development of Western societies entered an unusual period. People in Western countries took to the streets one after another, setting off waves of anti-war movements, feminist movements, anti-nuclear movements, national liberation movements, and ecological movements. At that time, those movements had not yet become the mainstream of society. The general public had limited understanding of related concepts, and the relatively conservative mainstream media outlets in the West often deliberately kept silence on them. When the influence of the movements sharply expanded, activists tend to adopt radical approaches to create further influence and shock the mainstream of Western society which ignored their demands.

Some of their radical propositions are not feasible in reality, and some are deeply influenced by anarchism, such as green anarchism. Some activists often stage sensational events with public threats, which cross the boundaries of the mainstream society. Given that they would propagandize their activities in advance their moves are not quite destructive. When advertising their ideas, striving to push their concepts into the mainstream, those social activists also avoided real danger. Against the backdrop, a complicated relationship between NSMs, media, and the public has been shaped. 

In recent years, concepts such as environmental protection have become mainstream in Western society, and radical movement methods have gradually declined. Figures such as teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg have become the focus of mainstream media for a while, and political organizations such as the Green Party have also become one of the main forces in European politics, gaining increased influence. Some of the propositions that belonged to radical environmentalism have been absorbed into the mainstream of society. As a result, although these radical movements still exist, their influence is weakening and they are marginalized, unable to trigger social concerns. 

But the current global situation is changing this trend. The reality of an unprecedented energy crisis has had a greater impact on people than environmental concepts do. The return of traditional energy has become a realistic choice that Western societies have to face, and the consciousness and thoughts of the public have also undergone some changes. The active radical environmental actions in fact are an embodiment of anxieties about reality. Fearing that mainstream society will shift its energy policy and the public will change its attitude toward environment protection, radical environmental organizations have attempted to garner society's attention through the same methods used in the past. 

The return of radical actions to some extent reflects that radical environmentalism doesn't have effective ways and solutions to respond to realistic energy problems, but instead has displayed some kind of destructiveness, which is detrimental to environmental protection. As eye-catching as these methods are, they are far from being able to help promote effective, concrete and active environmental strategies. This deserves people's concern and reflection. 

The author is a professor of the Peking University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn